Art?

[oggbashan]

"Reuters | AFP | Photos

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Tuesday October 28, 03:32 PM

Oral sex favourite for Turner prize
By Paul Majendie


LONDON (Reuters) - The Turner has enhanced its reputation as one of the world's most controversial art prizes -- this year's favourite displays a graphic depiction of oral sex.


The brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman, who firmly believe that nothing succeeds like excess, were installed 6/4 favourites to win the 20,000 pound prize, which is annually assailed by enraged critics as a national joke.


The bad boys of BritArt grabbed all the attention with "Death", described in the catalogue as "a life-size bronze cast of two inflatable sex dolls engaged in fellatio".


Photographers at Tuesday's media launch had difficulty finding a tasteful angle to illustrate the exhibit, which this year carried a health warning -- "This is not recommended for children under 16".


A close second in both the betting and the shock tactics battle is transvestite potter Grayson Perry whose elegantly painted vases have truly shocking subjects, like "We've Found the Body of Your Child, 2000".


Video artist Willie Doherty relived the sectarian horrors of Northern Ireland with "Re-Run", which shows a man running across the Craigavon Bridge in the deeply divided city of Londonderry.


Anya Gallaccio's exhibit may not last until the Turner winner is picked on December 7 -- she displays fading daisies and real rotting apples on a bronze-cast apple tree.


The Turner always stirs up a heated "Is it art?" debate among the British, and Tate Britain, the gallery which houses the exhibition, is delighted.


Gallery director Stephen Deuchar told Reuters: "It is important that everyone is talking about art."


"But we sometimes wish that press coverage would be less sensationalist and concentrate on what the artist is trying to say."


Pop superstar Madonna swore live on television when presenting the prize in 2001 to conceptual artist Martin Creed who won with his creation of a bare room with a light that switches on and off.


In 1998, Chris Ofili won with a Virgin Mary made of elephant dung. In 1995, Damien Hirst won with a pickled sheep, while artist Tony Kaye once tried to submit a homeless steel worker as his entry. "

I like it, but is it Art?

Og

 

[sanchopanza]

i'd piss on that "art" only it would make it more valuable

 

[Colleen Thomas]

A campbell's soup lable has writing on it, but is it literature?

Very hard to make a call on what is art. Many times things that seemed totally unartistic, became avante garde and then defined their own style. Minimalism, abstractionism, impressionism, cubeism all started as things critics probably noted my five year old can do better.

Heopefully Howard Sternism isn't the next wave in art, but then again, I'm a traditionalist, if I want to see art I go to the met and enjoy things where the picture looks like something I recognize

-Colly

 

[Quasimodem]

... I like it, but is it Art?
Og

How difficult could it be to find out whether that "homeless steelworker's" name is Arthur?

 

[MathGirl]

Walter beagle left a very interesting pile of ... art on my front lawn yesterday. Sprinklers destroyed it before I could preserve it in polyurethane for permanent display.
MG

 

[Quasimodem]

Walter beagle left a very interesting pile of ... art on my front lawn yesterday. Sprinklers destroyed it before I could preserve it in polyurethane for permanent display.
MG

A can or two of Alpo, and I feel certain Walter will be able to replicate the art.

Beagles are very reliable artists.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

A can or two of Alpo, and I feel certain Walter will be able to replicate the art.

Beagles are very reliable artists.

LOL,

Ain't that the truth!

-Colly

 

[Icingsugar]

How difficult could it be to find out whether that "homeless steelworker's" name is Arthur?

My grandfather's name was Arthur. I have always considerend my self to be, at least by proxy, a work of Art.

 

[oggbashan]

I hope I'm attaching the "work" of art.

Og

 

[Quasimodem]

Og,

Most successful artists' work is influenced by the effects of inflation.

This piece of Art, I feel certain, will be most influenced by the effects of deflation.

 

[gauchecritic]

Well as long as one of the Sattchi brothers buys it, it must be art.

I thoroughly enjoyed the two Japanese art students demo of art when they decided to have a pillow fight on Tracy Emmin's "Unmade Bed".

Gauche

 

[RenzaJones]

I have a camcorder so I suppose that makes me a film maker.

 

[ffreak]

I would never argue with a poetess equipped with a camera (and a kickass wife).

Hey, if it sells, it's art. If it doesn't sell, well, the artist just hasn't been recognized yet, right?

In Raleigh, we have a million dollar masterpiece that looks like a collection of irridescent solar panels located on an industrial street. So a guy talked a committee of local unemployed and stay-at-home moms into paying him 2000 times the cost of raw materials. Well, they do call them con Artists. I understand he even offered a prototype for city hall made out of fleece.

-FF (awaiting the latest masterpiece from the film capital)

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Outside of Chicago's city hall stands a huge Picasso sculpture that the city paid millions for back in--I think--the sixties. The sculpture looks like an enormous 12-story corfam steel dog, most likely an Afghan hound, sitting attentively in the center of Daley Plaza.

No one knew what it meant. No one knew whether it was good or not. Chicago, having a natural inferiority complex as the second--actually now the third--largest city in the USA, talked it up. It was a Picasso, it had cost millions, it was huge, of course it had to be good.

I didn't know much about visual art, but I had some friends who did, and one good friend who was a mad sculptor told me what he thought it meant. He said it was Picasso's way of telling the city: you don't want art, you want a pet. Here's your pet. A big fucking dog. Art is your dog.

When I expressed doubt about this, he asked me, "Okay, what would you have put there?"

I remember going to art fairs with that sculptor where people would look at abstract paintings and say that anyone could do that stuff. Okay then, my friend would say, and he was serious, go do it.

Or else just ask yourself what would you submit for the Turner competition?

---dr.M.

 

[Madame Manga]

This morning's Wall Street Journal has a hilarious article about the woes of museums trying to preserve certain pieces of modern art in their collections. I have always been interested in how conservators washed the soot off the Sistine Chapel and picked away the numerous overpaintings on Leonardo's Last Supper: that kind of thing. There are highly sophisticated methods for treating and repairing priceless oil paintings, frescoes, marble sculptures, etc. A great deal is known about the chemistry and aging processes of standard art materials, so conservators are on fairly solid and well-tested ground when faced with a deteriorating masterwork. But what do you do when the "artwork" is made of dried pig intestines?

One comfort: a lot of the crap (literally) simply will not survive to plague future generations of would-be connoisseurs.

MM

 

[Colleen Thomas]

At Misissippi State, my alma mater, outside one building there is a big pile of rusting iron I-beams and girders. Apparently it's a sculpture by a noted graduate of the architechtural school. To me it looks like left overs from building Allan hall piled up and welded together willy-nilly.

Art I think is in the eye of the beholder, very much like beauty. One man's trash is another man's treasure probably applies here. Perhaps it becomes art when enough people consider it a treasure to support the artist even though the vast majority still consider it trash. Lets see, 2 inflatable dolls love dolls on an inflatable raft.

Inflatable Ingrid the polyurethane pal with vibrating vagina: 241$.
"Big John" inflatable stud with adjustable erection: 341$.
Lazy boy pool mat: 31$.
1 tube crazy glue 4$.

"Coninisuers" who call this art and pay hundereds of thousands of dollars for it: Priceless

-Colly

 

[Quasimodem]

How about an art auction to benefit the homeless

Each city could bid against rival cities for prestigious objects d'art, including inflatable sex partners rampant on air mattresses, ‘religious' ikons sculpted in elephant, hippo, or gorilla excrement, welded together war surplus iron monger, even paint on canvas for the more traditional centres.

With judiciously placed reserve bids, and cagily encouraged intercity rivalry, hundreds of millions could be raised and turned into "privately financed" public housing.

 

[sanchopanza]

who was the man who sold his own canned shit as art?

 

[oggbashan]

Og,

Most successful artists' work is influenced by the effects of inflation.

This piece of Art, I feel certain, will be most influenced by the effects of deflation.

No. The piece of art is in BRONZE.

Og

 

[Quasimodem]

No. The piece of art is in BRONZE.
Og

Oh, yeah, that's right.

I checked back to the originals post. You did describe Death as "a life-size bronze cast of two inflatable sex dolls engaged in fellatio."

What did they do, paint it with polyurethane paint to make it look like a plastic inflatable?

In any case, I still see a deflation in price for its future.

 

[Quasimodem]

I may not know anything about Art,
But I know what I like!

 

[Seattle Zack]

That's a hot little pumpkin.

The computer ain't bad, either.

 

[Wills]

My wife is an international artist, of some reputation in Europe, so I have been involved with art, in its many guises, for the last 30 years.

There is much of art that I do not understand; particularly contemporary art. When I go to exhibitions, I usually determine in a few minutes whether the ‘art’ I am seeing is ‘my kind’ of art. Over the years, I have been taught to read art, to discern and rationalise beneath the immediate presentation and understand ‘where the artist is coming from’.

I still find this exercise quite a struggle, particularly with art that has little or no appeal to me, but I have, on occasion, been rewarded by a greater insight. (I get tested afterwards!)

We do this exercise with all manner of other art forms, books, film and music. Generally the hostility directed at society perceived ‘bad art’ is sensationalised out of all proportion to its status.

Possibly this is because we assume that art is a public funded activity, ‘its our money that is paying for this crap’ whether it be a sculpture in a public square or an exhibition in a municipal gallery.

With regard to the Turner Prize, there are important things to note.
1. The Turner Prize in the last decade has become synonymous with ‘sensational art’. No commentary on the artist Chris Offley (winner of the Turner Prize 3 or 4 years ago) ignores his use of elephant dung without ever attempting to rationalise the political message he is expressing.
2. Artists are nominated by their peers for the Turner Prize, it is open to artists aged 50 or under who have had a major exhibition in the preceding twelve months. It is not an open competition. Britain’s reputation for ‘shock art’ is producing artists bent on sensationalism as a way of opening gallery doors. To some degree it is self perpetuating circle.
3. The Turner Prize is sponsored by a minority UK commercial television company, it needs a degree of sensationalism to secure audience. Of course I am not suggesting that they influence the selection of nominees for the prize.

The reference in the thread to the Saatchi brothers need clarifying. It is Charles Saatchi alone who collects the so called ‘shock art’ of Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and others. Regardless of how you personally view the work of these artists and others in the ‘shock art’ stable, there is no denying that their work raised the consciousness of ‘art’ with the public. I would have many other things to say about the way in which the Saatchi Gallery promotes and use its collection, and artists, but since this is a public forum, I might risk judicial retribution. Being a Saatchi collected artist is not a bed of roses.

Wills.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

In my town, there was a woman who sold "art" that consisted of tampons dipped in paint.

Some of us seek therapy for miscarriages...

 

[gauchecritic]

The reference in the thread to the Saatchi brothers need clarifying.

Wills.

Cheers Wills. Glad somebody got it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, and I probably am, but what you seem to be saying is that only artists can fully appreciate artistry. The next sentence depends heavily on the previous sentence even resembling the truth.

What's the point?

If it really is art for Art's sake, why, other than promotion or shock, is it foisted on the public as 'cutting edge'? There was only one of these shock artists that I appreciated in the manner you describe and that was the Myra Hindley piece.

My question would be: Is it art if you have to be told what it means?

Gauche (who didn't understand but quite liked the 'pile of bricks')